


caught between goodbye and I love you

by philthestone



Series: start all over and win again [3]
Category: Avengers: Infinity War (2018), Guardians of the Galaxy (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, F/M, Gen, Post-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), i keep saying im done with the sadness and then im ... not
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-13
Updated: 2018-06-13
Packaged: 2019-05-21 21:30:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,523
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14923181
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/philthestone/pseuds/philthestone
Summary: He thinks with a sudden burst of clarity that is maybe from the feel of her palm or the lighting of the room that he loves her now and will love her even after he’s taken his last breath, because that’s how love works.Only he doesn’t really have much chance to make a fool of himself and voice this out loud, because all of a sudden the entire universe is aglow and she’s kissing him. Gamora is kissing him for the very first time, because he loves her, and it’s soft, and it’s finally safe, and he wishes they could stay like this forever.Peter wakes up.





	caught between goodbye and I love you

**Author's Note:**

> remember how many moons ago after writing the amy fake dies au, I said, never again. never again will i write about the intense prolonged pain of 1 man. 
> 
> and then infinity war came out of left field & what was i SUPPOSED to do, huh
> 
> anyways. this is definitely a companion piece to "start all over and win again", and tangentially related to "what do you need, a secondhand superstar". you don't have to read the second one at all, but "start all over" will make a lot of the plotless plot in this fic make more sense.
> 
> title is from the carpenters, & from the bottom of my heart ... it's sad and im sorry

“Allies? C’mon, you’d think any poor fool out there’d be on our side in this one, right?”

“You’d be surprised.”

“You’d be -- half the damn universe just got wiped out, man. And then brought back. Folks know who did it, they’re not gonna be on his side.”

“Sam --”

“No, he’s right.”

They look at him. Peter shrugs, and says,

“I grew up with pirates. You got shit, and then you got the kinda shit that shit teams up against.”

He’d forgotten they’d fixed the  _ Benatar’s _ signals to have extra reach just last week.

God, it feels like it’s been a decade since.

Anyway -- end of the world felt a pretty fitting time for three Ravager clans to remember they knew the Guardians by association.

“We got allies,” says Peter, feeling more exhausted than he’s ever felt in his life. “We just gotta go out and get ‘em.”

**

He’s in the big grass field a mile outside Pops’s house and Mom’s pointing out the different stars to him, one by one. 

It’s different from what he remembers, in a weird, not-different way. Like the stars are too bright, or the grass softer, less prickly against his back through his thin t-shirt. Like the sky is more purple than the darker blue he feels it ought to be, but Peter doesn’t mind. Mom’s laugh is the same, and that’s all that matters.

She knows all the stars off by heart ‘cause she’s the smartest person in the universe. It’s easy to laugh, out here, with the warm air gentle against his cheeks and the twilight not yet dark enough to be frightening. Peter’s pretty good at laughing easy, Mom says, but sometimes he needs a little extra push, even it if means going out near dark. Anyway, he’s with Mom, so he can’t be scared of anything anyway,  _ even _ the nighttime; she’s got her music on her, like always, and she says that music’s good enough to scare everything bad away. Peter wriggles a bit against the soft grass under them, grinning as Mom says, 

“Well, there’s a star I don’t quite know.”

“You mean it just showed up outta nowhere?”

Mom scrunches up her face like Pops sometimes does and laughs.

“No, baby, it means your mama forgot all about it.” She continues laughing, because Peter rolls over onto his side so he can look at her  _ properly _ and says,

“But Mom! You said you knew  _ all _ of them.”

She reaches over and pokes his nose, gentle enough that all he does is scrunch his face a bit, like Mom did.

“I was savin’ it for you. Go on, give her a name.”

“It’s a girl?”

Mom laughs again, the prettiest laugh in the  _ world _ probably. Then she looks at him like she’s gonna tell him a secret. “This one is, I think.”

Pops says Mom dreams too much for her own good. Peter can’t see anything at all bad about that; everything Mom says is so fun, like a whole universe full of possibilities. Peter didn’t know stars could be girls or boys or anything. If Mom thinks they are, though, there’s right likely some truth in that.

Anyway -- a name. Better be fitting for a whole star, he thinks.

“She looks like a Stevie.”

Mom says, “Now that’s a  _ voice _ ,” sounding due impressed with his selection. Slim gentle fingers sneak through the grass to tickle his sides. “I’m sure Miss Nicks’ll be real honoured to get a star named for her.”

Peter giggles, and kicks his feet out a bit. This is always the favorite part of his day, when Mom has the time off work to spend with him out here, and he doesn’t have to think about anything else, not his teachers at school or the seven-year-old judgement of his peers or Pops’s tired eyes. It’s just him and Mom and the music and stars, and Peter hopes it’ll stay like this forever. Mom reaches down and grabs his left hand in hers, lifting it up so they can point out the twinkling thing on Stevie’s left together.

_ Peter, take my hand _ .

He feels like he’s floating, just a little bit. Like everything’s supposed to hurt, but he can’t feel anything quite enough for the hurt to be real. 

In front of him, all he sees is orange. It stretches on forever.

_ I’m sorry I didn’t do none of it right _ .

He hasn’t been this scared in a while, but he can’t feel enough to control it, to do anything about it. He just is, and everything else just is, and he should be breathing, he thinks, but that doesn’t seem to be happening either.

_ Peter, you promised _ .

The orange is gone.

Instead, there’s the soft, bluish light above his bunk, the  _ Milano’s _ familiar cramped walls up against his back as he stares at the ceiling, earbuds stuffed loosely in his ears. He’s vaguely paying attention to The Carpenters in his ear, slow and nostalgic and filled with melancholy because he’s always been this person, far too full of sentiment for his own good. She’s standing in the doorway, silhouetted by a light source that he can’t place; hesitant, but soft. The long waves of her hair in the muted light make her softer, gentle.

_ Gentle  _ \-- there’s gentility in her face. A year does a lot to a person, Peter’s come to learn. The fact that she’s trying so hard, the fact that it’s coming to her more effortless than he thinks either of them anticipated, triggers a sudden, overwhelming swell of affection in his chest.

“Hey,” she says, quietly.

“Hey.” He’s distracted enough to forget to pull the music out of his ears until she’s made her way across the room and perched on the edge of the bed. He sees her eyes catch on the earbuds, and the minute flicker of something that might turn into annoyance, so he tugs them out and Karen Carpenter fades away to nothing more than a vague, muffled echo from between the bedsheets. The longing in her voice somehow sticks behind.

She’s come to find him, he thinks: because the job went sour, because it was weirder than their usual fair, because that’s what she -- they -- do now. Come to find each other, easy and effortless. Room’s quiet, thrumming a little with the ship’s engine running in the background, and he can hear the muffled noises of the team from out in the hall, bickering over something so stupidly mundane that it jars something in his chest and his breath catches.

“Peter,” Gamora says.

“I’m okay.” He brings his hand up to wipe roughly at his eyes, which are stupidly wet all of a sudden. It’s just -- nothing  _ happened _ , but life is crazy sometimes, and it makes it harder to ignore the weird feelings. Or the resurgence of old feelings, or just -- everything. It makes it harder to forget about  _ everything  _ that’s happened, maybe isn’t happening anymore but it  _ did _ happen, when your job means almost getting killed sometimes.

Gamora’s better at this than he is; better at compartmentalizing, she’d called it once, newly without judgement in her voice. It’s just part of the job -- of the life. But still, it sucks being this person, sometimes, and he’s no longer ten years old and scared of getting the shit beat out of him if he cries, but it doesn’t make it any more  _ fun _ . And she’s here, of course, because she knows this about him. 

Impulsively, with something in it as wistful as the voice that’s playing invisible background to this moment from the bedding, he brings up his free hand and traces the edge of the bandage around her wrist. Groot had insisted they put it on, even though Peter knows she doesn’t really need it. Come morning the burn will be gone completely.

His fingers slip off the sterilized gauze and onto her skin. He can hear her soft inhale. 

“I’m okay,” Peter says again.

He doesn’t see her other hand until it’s resting against his cheek, warm compared to the cool air of the room. They do this now -- this comfortable touch thing. Haven’t done much else, but sometimes he thinks --  _ God _ , sometimes he thinks this could be it for the rest of his life and he’d die a happy man. He takes a shaking breath and smiles, covers her hand with his because he can. He’s allowed to do that now, too, even if they haven’t quite talked about it yet, four months since everything that  _ happened _ . But she’s here, and looking at him with a care that’s so unique to her. She makes it so easy, he thinks, to do the forgetting that their chaotic lives make so hard.

“I know,” Gamora says. 

Peter feels something indescribably important slot into place in his heart. 

“I love you.”

The words slip out of their own accord, and he doesn’t even realize they have until Gamora’s brown eyes, sharp and dark and beautiful, widen. Like a lag in the  _ Milano’s _ comm controls, his own eyes bug out with the shock of what just came out of his mouth just a second later. She’s frozen, hand stiff against his cheek.

“I -- Gamora, I --”

He doesn’t know if given the chance he’d have done anything but uselessly repeat what he just said. Probably not -- because now that it’s come out, now that  _ he’s _ said it, it’s the only thing playing on loop in his head. 

_ I love you, I love you, I love you _ . 

He thinks with a sudden burst of clarity that is maybe from the feel of her palm or the lighting of the room that he loves her now and will love her even after he’s taken his last breath, because that’s how love works. 

Only he doesn’t really have much chance to make a fool of himself and voice this out loud, because all of a sudden the entire universe is aglow and she’s kissing him. Gamora is kissing him for the very first time, because he loves her, and it’s soft, and it’s finally safe, and he wishes they could stay like this forever.

The blue light of the bunk makes her eyes shine extra bright when she pulls away. She’s so beautiful, he thinks, and she believes him, he realizes, which is more than he could have ever asked for. “Peter,” she breathes, face framed by the colourful waves of her hair, tinted purple in the blue light. The shadows dance over her cheeks as she smiles, bigger than anything he’s seen from her, overwhelmed with this joy of it as he is.

He reaches out to touch her cheek and everything dissolves under his fingers.

_ I love you, more than anything _ .

Peter opens his eyes.

He can breathe again. He can feel again.

He still can’t control the pain.

**

They’re ten jumps out from Earth, somewhere that’s technically Nova space but isn’t because the star charts haven’t yet taken into account the complete decimation of a peaceful empire. Peter thinks it’s great that he has little to no appetite these days, otherwise every time he has to come and adjust their course he’d throw up his dinner.

Allies has, of course, always been a tricky sort of word. Mostly, Peter’s never needed to look for allies when it’s the end of the world. Middle of the world, maybe. Some point at the beginning -- sure. But the end? 

Then again, he’s had more than one end of the world to deal with. If he’s being honest, none of them have really had much claim to the presence of allies. Family, maybe -- but the  _ real _ End of The World demands more than just five people in a tin can.

It was about a day before Peter had this resigned realization that Stakar somehow got a signal out to the  _ Benatar _ , something about no patience for bullshit and how the return of half the known universe is all on some army lady from Terra, and does Peter know her?

No, Peter does not God damn know her.

But they’ve put together a party anyway, and they’re flying out from Earth to connect with everyone who wants Thanos dead more than they want  _ them _ dead.

Which, as Wilson the bird man put it, is most everyone. 

He’s still not sure how they came back, and no one seems to want to tell him. Peter thinks it’s probably because everyone else also knows jack about anything that’s happened the past week, but that’s an unfortunate thought that leaves them more screwed than it’s okay to be, so Peter deals with feeling like he’s just not in the know, so he doesn’t have to deal with the alternative.

Because if there’s no rhyme or reason to their return, then Gamora might still be --

“Fuck,” he mutters, rubbing at his eyes and fumbling with the coffee maker, the new one that they just got up and running before the proverbial and literal apocalypse.

“Mr. Quill?”

Peter jumps ten feet.

Almost. Whole kitchen put together ain’t ten feet, but it’s the principle of the thing.

“ _ God _ \-- ju -- didn’t your old man ever teach you not to sneak up on people bigger’n you?” He feels like someone kicked the air out of him, but the tension drains away fast enough and he slumps a little lamely against the counter, facing the bright eyes in front of him. His next words come out more lamely than anything. “Could get you killed one day.”

Parker is sixteen and fresh-faced even after death and un-death and intellectually, Peter knows he probably shouldn’t be here. 

Doesn’t make a lick of difference to real life, though. Kids are put through hell. That’s just how the world works.

It fucking  _ shouldn’t _ be, he thinks, and the thought is in her voice in his head.

Peter’s whole chest aches.

“Sor-sorry,” Parker stammers, looking a little alarmed, whether by Peter’s violent start or the subsequent abrupt three-sixty to resigned exhaustion, he’s not sure. “I didn’t -- I mean, my dad’s --” He looks like he’s not quite sure what he’s allowed to say. “-- Dead.”

Peter’s fingers are numb. He came in here to make coffee, he thinks. The good kind, the stuff Gamora likes.

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay. It was a long time ago.”

“Yeah, still shit.”

Parker bounces a couple times on the balls of his feet before flitting to Peter’s side, wide-eyed.

“I know,” he says. “But I just -- Groot and Mr. Rocket said you had music. On board. A-and I was wondering if -- if we could play some, maybe.”

He’s sure by  _ Groot and Mr. Rocket _ is meant Rocket only, because there’s no way the kid’s picked up flora colossus in less than two days. But they seem to get along well, which Peter finds himself silently clinging to as something good to come out of this whole mess: the fact that Groot’s found a friend his own age.

Or -- something. Not that it makes much of a difference  _ now _ , anyway, because he’s been quiet and anxious and refuses to leave Peter’s side for more than five time parts per day. Which are in turn spent glued to Rocket, in an equally quiet and anxious fashion. Kid hasn’t been clingy like this since he was a baby that fit in Peter’s palm, and Peter finds himself desperately wishing he’d start cussing them all out again, just for some return to normalcy.

But he seems to like showing Parker his video games, even with the language barrier. It’s weirdly normal in a situation that can’t be less so.

Peter pauses, and realizes he’s holding the filter mech upside down. 

“Yeah, sure,” he says, feeling more distracted than he ought to be. “Tunes’re programmed in the ship. They didn’t just go ahead and start ‘em?”

“They -- they said we should ask you first. If you were okay with it.”

His throat tightens. Right. Right. 

Peter tosses the filter into the sink with a jarring  _ clang _ and looks at the crumpled coffee packet on the counter in front of him. The Xandarian logo mocks him, openly and loudly.

“Yeah, I’m okay with it,” he says, and for the life of him he’s not sure how he manages to smile, but Parker seems to visibly relax when he does, so Peter keeps it there. Gamora says, always with a wry twist to her lips and a small note of affection, that he can put people at ease just by being himself. There ain’t a lot of ease around here just now. His throat is tight, now’s not really the time to be that frickin’ person he always is, so he shoves it down. “‘Course I’m okay with it. Let’s go see what we’ve got.”

Parker laughs, breathless, shoulders relaxing all at once. “Let’s hope it’s better than your taste in movies.”

Peter wrinkles his nose. The coffee lies abandoned in the kitchen, which is probably a good thing, because Gamora will kill him if all her favorite stuff’s gone when she comes back. 

He pats Parker on the shoulder and says,

“Can it before I kick your scrawny ass off my ship, kid.”

He gets a dimpled sixteen-year-old grin for his efforts, which somehow makes everything marginally better than before.

**

They take -- an inventory, or something, the day after the original end of the world is reversed. Peter hasn’t been to Earth in almost thirty years, which means that he spends a good twenty-four hours repressing ninety percent of his feelings with great gusto and speaking only when spoken to. And when he has to bitch at Rocket for leaving claw marks on his jacket when he hugs him  _ hello _ and then tries to kill him for dying in the first place. 

He doesn’t bitch too hard -- just enough for things to be slightly normal. Rocket looks relieved when he does it, so Peter counts that as some sort of bizarre twisted win.

Anyway -- an inventory. Of, like, people. Who’s here to kick Thanos’s ass, who’s a civilian who wants to kick Thanos’s ass but physically can’t, etcetera.

Either way, Captain Freaking America asks him, quietly and over a table covered in assorted weaponry, why he’s in this fight. He sounds kind of pathetically like he’s trying to figure out his own crap, so Peter doesn’t tell him to screw off. Also, he used to read comics of this guy as a kid, so that would be weird. 

But --

“I’m just --” Peter’s surprised out how strangled his own voice comes out. Like he, too, is kind of pathetically trying to figure out his own crap. “Just. Trying to keep my family safe.”

“You could have run,” Cap says, in a way that shows how hopelessly out of the loop they all are with respect to each other’s business. Peter can’t say he knows more than two fun facts about any given person stuck here commiserating and that is  _ definitely _ not enough, not for a situation that’s so intimately Goddamn personal for everyone. 

Rocket’s fond of bringing it up all the time, the fact that everyone’s got dead people. Weirdly, his annoying nasal voice repeating that on loop in Peter’s head is the only thing that’s helping him keep his shit together right now. 

He still  _ has _ people, not-dead, present tense. He can’t afford to lose it this time. Not again.

Still -- anyone who says it’s harder to work with family than with strangers is spouting bullshit, Peter’s come to know. Especially at the end of the world.

“Not really, no,” says Peter, and looks back up, the exhaustion pressing against the underneaths of his eyes. Cap gives him a look that’s annoyingly gentle under his mountain man beard and Peter’s not sure if he appreciates it or hates him for it. Two mississippis pass and he still can’t figure out what to do so he breaks eye contact and looks determinedly at the floor.

His eyes catch the silver hilt clipped to his belt on their way down. Peter clenches his fists to stop them from trembling.

**

So, Carol Danvers. Magical ex-pilot chick. Stark keeps repeating her name and pacing up and down the  _ Benatar’s _ common room, like just by speaking it he can figure out how the hell she’s involved.

“Danvers.  _ Carol _ Danvers. Danvers, Carol. Captain Carol Danvers -- you ever heard of her, Thor?”

“I haven’t.”

“We’re too far out for FRIDAY to access the database, did you know that?”

“I did not.”

“Carol. Okay. Carol Danvers --”

“Tony,” says Thor, “I cannot stress how much I would like for you to stand still for two moments,  _ please _ .”

“I’m  _ thinking _ ,” says Stark. “This is how I think. You think by sitting, and that’s fine. That’s fine, so we all think in different ways --”

“I personally think best when I am standing,” says Drax seriously, from his customary corner where he’s sharpening his knives.

“See?” says Stark, spreading his hands. “There.”

Thor covers his face with his hands. Peter clears his throat from the hatch, and shifts his weight to his left leg when everyone turns to look at him.

“Hey,” he motions with his chin a little. “Mantis, you still got the laundry bag in the hold?”

Mantis, who is sitting on the couch beside the self-proclaimed god of thunder and has been up until this moment watching the exchange in the middle of the room in wide-eyed silence, brightens immediately, her antennae twitching upwards.

“Oh, yes! I will come and get that now.”

“Thanks,” says Peter. He sucks air in through his teeth and looks at Stark. “You got anything?”

“Laundry,” he says, weirdly, like he’s forgotten the word.

“Yeah,  _ laundry _ ,” says Peter, wagging his head a bit. “Eight people on a ship for a week, you wanna tell me we don’t need --”

“No -- no, I mean.” Stark swallows, and nods. “It’s fine. Thanks. I got nothin’. Best -- ask the kid, though.”

“Right.” He looks at Thor as Mantis arrives at his elbow. “You?”

“I have spare clothing, thank you,” says Thor, looking at him in a way that’s weirdly understanding. Peter hates it, but the guy’s unnervingly nice when he’s not being depressed, so he can’t really be an asshole about it.

“Right,” he says again. “Great. Okay. I’m gonna -- go check on the kids. And Rocket.” He raps his knuckles once against the doorway and smiles a little, turning to make his way back up to the hold and leaving everyone looking just a little lost.

Mantis trails behind him, lips pressed together in a tight line. 

“Peter?” she starts, like a question.

“Yeah.” 

They’re gonna have to jet the trash sometime soon too, Peter thinks, rubbing at his eyes again and keying in the code to the cockpit. It’s where Parker and Groot were last, he thinks -- something about learning how to read star charts from Rocket. Peter hopes they haven’t blown anything up. Anyway, trash -- and the laundry. They have a twelve hour rule, about leaving your clothes lying around. Past the twelve mark and it gets jettisoned into space.

He nearly lost his favorite pair of underwear one time.

“Peter? Are you … okay?”

“Hm?” Cockpit’s empty, which means they’re either in Groot’s disaster of a room or in the engine room, and Peter finds he’s too tired to really care. Weirdly, he trusts Rocket on this. The furry idiot has always been good with kids, and maybe he’ll convince Drax to tag in later -- they’re better at it than Peter is, anyway. “Fine, Mantis.”

He taps the controls a couple times, double-checks their course. Mantis hovers at his elbow, gripping at her hands the way she does when she’s holding herself back from touching someone. She’s taken everything crazy well, for someone who can feel most frickin’ everything, and Peter takes a deep breath, tries to push away any stray crap he’s got simmering under the surface. She doesn’t deserve to get the brunt of everyone else’s pain on top of her own, and Peter knows the others forget that sometimes, but he’s -- he’s supposed to be the Goddamn captain. He can’t lose it again.

“Peter,” Mantis says again. “I just want to know if you are -- I mean, you have been very quiet, and I wanted to make sure if you are alright.”

_ Alright _ . He’s not the only one who’s been quiet -- Thor doesn’t talk much, and neither does Drax. But then, Drax has always been fairly open about letting Mantis read his feelings. Stark and the spider kid talk enough for all of them combined, but Peter can’t be too annoyed about it. They got each other back, and anyway, people cope in different ways. He just doesn’t have the energy to cope like that right now, is all.

He looks up to check the comm signals and his eyes catch on the picture he’d taped to the pilot’s controls what feels like decades ago, now, even though it was only last year. Her smile is bright and beautiful even in the shitty cockpit lighting, and Peter feels his fingers numb again, hovering frozen over the comm switches above his head.

“I’m okay, Mantis,” he says, forcing himself to look away, suddenly needing to move, walk, get the hell out of the cockpit.

Wrong move: physical distance means Mantis thinks he doesn’t want to talk to her, and she reaches out to hold him in place. Peter reacts too late, his baby sister’s soft fingers already curled around his bare wrist.

“Oh, no, Mantis, don’t --”

“Please --” And that’s as far as she gets before she chokes, frowns in confusion as her eyes fill with tears. She looks so startled, eyes wide and scared. It’s a pathetic sight, making him suddenly feel shaky and beaten, like the remaining dregs of energy have been sapped from his legs. His throat works, tight and painful.

“Mantis,” he says, helpless. 

“ _ Oh _ ,” she says, and begins to cry. 

The engine hums, quiet and muted in the background.

“Ah ... shit. Shit, okay. C’mon, c’mere.”

“I am sorry,” whispers Mantis, holding her hands close to herself and pressing her face against his jacket lapel as Peter hugs her, exhaling, feeling the defeat seep into his bones. The cockpit air feels stale and musty, and he’s careful to keep his hands against her clothed back, wishing he knew how the hell to fix this.

“It’s okay. It’s okay, ‘s my fault. Look, we’ll just -- cry it all out, and then we can go pick up the laundry and I dunno, I’ll make a dick of myself in front of Drax and then you can feel him while he’s laughin’. He’d be okay with that, I know he would.” 

She sniffles, slight shoulders still shaking.

Peter realizes his own eyes are wet. He clears his throat, hard, and takes a deep breath. There’s no point, he thinks. It’ll just make her more upset, and she’s already cried -- already spent near a whole day crying just for herself, in the afterward, when they woke up again and not everyone was there. And then another day, for the lingering aftershocks of everyone else’s grief and fear and overwhelming relief, filling the air itself.

She’s stronger than anyone who doesn’t know her would give credit for -- even the group of them forget it sometimes, ‘cause it’s easy to, ‘cause they’re dumbasses, ‘cause you always feel a bit less in awe of family than you do strangers. She can knock people thrice her size out with the touch of a finger, Peter  _ knows _ , Peter’s  _ seen _ . But God, even the strongest person in the world shouldn’t have to deal with other people’s emotional baggage on top of their own all the time.

_ Shit _ , Peter thinks, and clears his throat again.

“Mantis. C’mon. What do you say, huh? That works every time.”

She nods, small against his shirt. She’s still crying. He should let her go, he thinks, but then she’d feel all alone, and that’s the last thing he wants her to feel right now. He wishes Nebula were here, if only because she and Mantis understand each other weirdly well and Nebula’s prosthetics leave empathic abilities on the fritz, making hugging an easier thing. 

Hugging Nebula. It’s such a normal thing to crop back up and weird him out like it always does that Peter chokes a little, has to bite his cheek, hands fisting briefly over Mantis’s back.

But Nebula’s  _ not  _ here, hasn’t been here since they turned to dust under the hellish orange light of a decrepit planet -- gone with her biting remarks and open disdain of him that Gamora insists is only to conceal the fact that she doesn’t actually mind him.  _ Gone  _ with the location that Peter can’t remember, that bites into his lungs in the middle of the night cycle when he’s in the bunk alone and cold and too exhausted to cry. 

“I do not know how to make you feel better,” Mantis says, hiccupping, like she’s admitting something shameful. Like  _ better _ is something that can happen. Like she has a responsibility, or something, like she  _ wants _ to. Something about her stretched-out voice makes Peter’s next breath come out trembling like an engine with its mechs shot.

Too exhausted to cry, Peter thinks, desperately.

“Hey, it’s -- it’s okay, you know. I’ll be okay. Just gotta keep it together a little bit longer, so we can figure all this shit out and blow Thanos to hell. We got, like, a whole pirate angel on our side this time, you know? And Captain America -- you met him, right? On Earth? Folks say he can do anything.” It’s impressive, how easily rambling comes to him. “Okay?”

“Okay.”

“Okay,” he says, and blows out another breath. The tremble’s gotten a bit better, thank God.

Outside the cockpit, he can see the edge of a passing star cluster, the gas cloud unfurling in bright colours that illuminate the pilot’s seat controls. Peter swallows again, and tries to breath as Mantis slowly stops shaking against him.

**

Funny how most folks on their recon mission to the ass end of outer space are still missing people.

Okay, so it’s not quite a recon mission, and Peter’s more familiar with this corner of the galaxy than most others. But still -- something about missing pieces, or drifting, or some flowery sentimental crap that would sound amazing in a song but feels weird in his own head -- that’s what makes up most of their new crew. 

Key-word being  _ most _ ; Peter’s pretty sure Stark and the kid are a package deal, and Stark came because -- because he’s one of the leaders, or something. It’s his job to go find the magic lady in space who apparently knows how they all came back. His job to recruit more allies. 

Captain America keeps things organized on Earth, and Tony Stark leads a mission to space.

Weirdly, he’s been real willing to let Peter call the shots on most things that don’t immediately concern him: their course and direction and speed, the general function of the ship, which songs are playing at odd hours in the ship’s cycle. It’s strange; he remembers hearing about the Starks on TV as a kid, like they were from a totally different planet. So famous that even a little kid in the back end of rural Missouri had heard of ‘em. Mom would always say that if anyone was gonna make getting to space easy for the average person, it’d be Stark Industries.

Funny how that turned out, Peter thinks, staring a little blankly at the hatchway leading to the cockpit, where Stark’s holed up holocalling back to Earth to report on their status. 

Beside Peter, Thor is sitting slumped against the arm of their sorry excuse for a couch, humoring the questions Parker and Groot are asking from their place on the floor. They’re halfway through Groot trying to teach the other boy how to cheat at three-fingered holo dice.

“No offense Mr. Thor.” Parker’s holding his cards so that the whole Milky Way can see them, Peter figures. “But if you’ve travelled the whole universe like five times, how’ve you, like,  _ never _ met this Captain Danvers lady?”

“The universe is an incredibly vast place,” Thor says. Peter’s only half-listening -- not because Thor hasn’t proven himself to be anything  _ but  _ a dick, which is  _ incredibly _ annoying -- but because more than three cycles on a ship full of people you don’t quite know, it’s good for your head to let yourself space out a bit, just for a little while. Least, that’s what Yondu used to say, though Peter’s fairly sure he never put it in practice for fear of getting shot in the back. Bastard.

They’re near five days out and he’s impressed with how well Stark and the kid have been dealing with the jumps. Peter remembers his earliest experiences with outer space in fragments of shitty feelings, but the jumps were the worst; shaky legs and the desperate need to puke his guts up over Kraglin’s bunk felt like the worst price to pay to get from one place to another. But they seem okay -- kid’s got funky powers, Peter guesses, and Stark looks too stressed to be worried about anything as trivial as space travel-related nausea. 

Drax is sitting on the bench against the wall, intently darning what Peter realizes with a tightness to his chest is one of Gamora’s socks in silence. Ship’s speakers are on; Rocket insisted they play Southern Nights, because he’s in the engine room fixing something he claims Peter broke with his amateur piloting and Southern Nights always gets him in his groove. Mantis is in the cockpit, keeping watch in their break between jump points.

“-- ren’t there more Asgardians around? You guys are all super strong, you could totally help beat up Thanos!”

“I  _ am  _ Groot.”

He hears a faint, unreadable noise from Thor; the couch shifts a little under him.

“My people are -- gone, I believe.”

Peter’s blank stare at the wall doesn’t do much to block out the tableau: Drax has looked up from his darning, thick fingers still around the needle; Parker’s face has fallen; Groot keeps looking between Thor and Peter, wide-eyed, like one of them’s gonna get up and declare Thor the worst practical joker around.

Weird how even after literally dying, kids still can’t wrap their heads around the concept of death. 

Peter’s not sure he ever quite grew out of that himself.

“But --  _ all _ of them? We all came back, though. They can’t all be gone!”

“The spider child is correct,” says Drax, frowning a little.

“I am  _ Groot _ !”

Peter brings a hand up to rub at his forehead, still half-staring at the cockpit door. He’ll intervene if either of the boys gets too upset, he thinks, throat working.

“It’s not quite that simple,” Thor is saying. His deep voice is rough in a way it wasn’t before. Peter frowns at the wall, his own throat annoyingly tight. “They were -- not killed by the stones.”

The way his shoulders tense is immediate, uncontrollable -- like something else has grabbed them in a vice, sharp and scary. Something he can’t control, just like whatever it is that makes Peter’s mouth move next. He surprises himself with how loud it is; everyone starts and stares at him, like only just remembering he’s there.

“Doesn’t mean they can’t come back.”

Thor glances at the wide-eyed teenagers on the floor with their game, then back up at Peter, like he’s trying to decide how worth it it’ll be to go into detail. Peter realizes belatedly that his fist has clenched against the couch’s arm.

“I am certain that they cannot,” Thor says, voice much quieter than before.

“You don’t  _ know  _ that.” 

The couch upholstery is rough under his fingers and he’s standing before he’s fully processed it -- a sudden need to go somewhere that is not here. It’s not fair that everyone else can get people back and Thor can’t, he thinks, his whole torso tight. He stares determinedly at the wall -- for some reason he’s having a really hard time looking at Drax and the sock -- but he thinks -- he’ll go down to the engine room and help Rocket with his fiddling. Maybe get yelled at a bit, or something. Who knows. 

“You don’t  _ know _ ,” Peter repeats.

“Quill,” Drax starts, but Peter’s already made it to the hallway.  _ Benatar’s _ not that new, and Peter knows her like the back of his hand, but for a second, he forgets if he needs to go left or right. He presses his palm to his eyes again, hard, because he stood up too fast and there are black spots popping up. Usually those mean he hasn’t been sleeping much, but that doesn’t make any difference here -- not when he’s supposed to have his shit together, supposed to be the captain. What good is he if he can’t even stay in the frickin’ room to make sure Thor doesn’t accidentally re-traumatize the kids with his sadness? Not much good, Peter thinks. Not any good at all.

The large, heavy hand on his shoulder nearly makes him jump.

“ _ Peter _ .” 

“Drax, man --” Peter manages, in a weak imitation of his usual easy cheer.

Drax has abandoned his darning, and is instead digging thick fingers into Peter’s shoulder with a firm grip and turning him around.

“You stopped me,” he says sudden and out of the blue. “On Knowhere.”

Peter stares at him, nonplussed. The air in the hallway is suddenly cold but stale, dry in his throat.

“From avenging your family,” he manages, finally, voice choked. “Yeah.”

There’s a long moment where they look at each other, Peter feeling abruptly adrift and scared in a way he hasn’t let himself feel for the past two days -- three days -- the past  _ week _ . Out in the hallway, the music is muffled; the ending chorus of Southern Nights is tinny and distant, like someone covered the radio with a blanket.

Wordlessly, Drax nods. Without further preamble, he steps in and hugs Peter tightly.

It’s unanticipated in a way that  _ shouldn’t _ be; Drax gives weird bear hugs all the time, and Peter’s long since stopped stiffening up at them. Normally, he can ease into it in under half a second, patting Drax on the back and letting him squeeze Peter’s ribs until he has to complain about breathing.

This time, Peter flounders at first; awkward, ungainly, stiff. 

Drax doesn’t seem to mind, and simply tightens his grip.

“Things will make sense again,” Drax says over Peter’s shoulder. Simple, frank, to the point. 

Drax always has a way of making everything he says sound obvious.

Peter nods again, cheek pressed against the raised tattoos covering the older man’s neck. He feels numb, mostly. 

As if he hasn’t felt numb since before he crumbled to dust on an alien planet, right after the end of the world.

**

Kraglin hugs him so tightly Peter’s fairly sure he breaks a bone somewhere.

It’s okay, mostly. Peter feels about the same.

“Nebula told me what happen’d,” he says, gravelly voice familiar in a bone-deep way that puts another lump in Peter’s throat on top of all the others he’s been violently shoving down for the past eight days. The older man’s bony arms are just long enough to wrap all the way around Peter’s chest, the way it’s been since Peter finally hit his growth spurt at eighteen and stopped having to stand on his tiptoes to come up to Kraglin’s shoulder. Kraglin was never too big on hugs before-before, when they were kids. Then again, Peter was always a bit of a brat, and Ravagers kicked your ass if you liked hugs too much, anyway. 

It’s nice, that they’re hugging now.

“‘M glad you ain’t dead, Krags.”

“ _ I _ ain’t dead? I been breathin’ air this whole time. Ya’ll were the ones what disappeared a whole two days.”

He pulls away, thin fingers still tight on Peter’s shoulders. Kraglin’s never been big on hugs, but the fear flickering in the back of his watery eyes is familiar in a curdling, tasteless way that leaves Peter feeling suddenly desperate for an anchor. He reaches forward and grabs the side of Kraglin’s jumpsuit, leather bending awkwardly in his fist. Kraglin doesn’t twitch; bastard always did get some things better than most. 

It’s then that Peter realizes belatedly what he said.

“Wait -- you saw Nebula?”

“Sure,” says Kraglin. His facial hair is as scraggly as always, prosthetic fin looking slightly worse for wear than usual. He looks confused. “You didn’t hear from her?”

“No,” says Peter, his tongue feeling like sandpaper. It would be easy to be annoyed, angry even, that she’s disappeared, hasn’t thought to reach out, that Kraglin saw her Before but doesn’t know where she is now.

“Said somethin’ ‘bout a way to kill the asshole,” says Kraglin. “I couldn’t stop her if I wanted to, y’know how she gets. But yer all here again. That’s a relief if I ever had one, Pete.”

_ All here again _ .

Beside him, Stark and Thor are hovering as much as powerful important dudes  _ can _ hover, and Peter sighs and takes a step back, jerks his chin a little.

“You got our message, then? I brought friends. You probably know what the hell’s going on better’n us.”

“Yeah.” Kraglin grins a snaggle-tooth grin at Thor as he reaches out to grip his shoulder in greeting. “You don’t mind me sayin’, sir, but you got some mighty fine musculature upon you.”

“Thank you,” says Thor, smiling in a way that Peter wishes he could muster, in a way that somehow pushes past the fact that he has no idea if he’s got anyone left out there. The pit of Peter’s throat burns, so he looks at Stark instead, who’s standing to the side with his right hand gripping his other arm, staring at the ground a little blankly. They left the kids with Drax and Mantis on the ship, and Rocket’s screwed off somewhere, probably to antagonize Stakar in the hours before they all have to depressedly lug their asses back to Earth. “It is a pleasure to meet you, ally of morons.”

Peter turns his eyes skyward. 

“Stakar found me first,” Kraglin is saying, apparently undeterred by his new status as ally of morons. “Thought the apocalypse’d started.” 

“He wasn’t wrong,” Peter mutters. The ceiling of the darkened hangar is an excellent listener.

“We seem to have survived it, though,” Thor says, returning Kraglin’s shoulder-clasp. Peter prepares himself to roll his eyes again. “And made it out here to you. Quill is a competent, honourable captain.”

Peter jerks his head over, then back, because Kraglin’s talking again. Thor looks as tired as he feels, but a faint remnant of his smile is still there.

“Anyway,” Kraglin’s saying, “Cap’n ‘Leta’s puttin’ up the magic Terran lady as a houseguest. No one’s kilt each other yet, so we figure they get along jus’ like a house on fire. Sure you don’t know her, Pete?”

Peter inhales, then exhales.

“Earth’s a big place,” Tony cuts in, finally looking up, seeming to come back to himself. It’s a weird thing to feel profoundly grateful for, but that doesn’t stop Peter from feeling it.

“Well, she’s pretty cool,” says Kraglin. “Gamora’d like her. She still on the ship?”

Peter can feel Stark’s eyes on his back. Thor’s looking at the gangway of the  _ Quadrant _ in silence. The relief is evaporating as fast as it showed up.

“Let’s load up,” says Peter, the words stale in his mouth. “We got a long way back to Earth.”

**

All in all, this’d be a lot easier if the universe wasn’t so intent on making it extra hard.

The Zune’s sitting perched on one of the crates in the engine room, playing on full volume, and Peter’s got his fingers wound tight against an uncooperative piece of the air cycling unit, determined to make breathing a bit fresher. It’s probably why he keeps feeling like there isn’t enough air to breathe -- this stupid broken crap part, which they cheaped out on because that’s what they do. Frustrating that his own lack of ability to budget is coming to bite him in the ass in the middle of the aftermath of the whole world falling to pieces, but Peter figures that that’s just how his life was fated to be. 

It’d be an easy fix, too. Screw around with the wiring a bit and adjust the settings, and  _ bam _ , better recycled air in the middle of outer space. But the dumbass who worked on it last -- one hundred percent Peter himself -- screwed on the adjustor too tightly. The damn thing is refusing to move. And it needs to  _ move _ if Peter’s gonna get anywhere close to the wiring.

He’s good at fixing things -- not as good as Rocket, or even Stark, maybe, but it comes easy to him as a hobby; as a thing to do to take his mind of stuff. The activator or his mask gets fiddled with whenever he’s stressed and he’s fixed the Zune’s battery a hundred times over, and back when he had the  _ Milano _ as a dumb kid, his two hands were the only thing holding her together when things got rough -- his two hands and his mom’s old tapes, blasting at full volume from the ship’s speakers.

So Peter’s down here fixing, and blasting some tunes, and there’s an Asgardian ship being towed by the  _ Benatar _ that they hadn’t planned on running into.

Hadn’t thought was out there  _ to _ run into, Peter thinks, swiping his bangs out of his eyes and picking up one of Rocket’s old multitools from where it’s sitting on the ground. The Zune starts playing David Bowie and Peter blows out a long breath, setting the ‘tool’s wrench against the adjustor and applying pressure. Thor had thought they’d all died -- probably hadn’t dared think anything else. Hope gets weird when you’ve lost everything there is to lose, Peter knows. He grunts as the stupid dial doesn’t budge at all.

But there they were: a small, brightly-coloured ship; a handful of haggard survivors; and a woman with bruises around her eyes and tangles in her braids who swore at them colourfully over the comms until Thor shouldered Peter and Rocket out of the way and gripped the consolle so hard it bent visibly under his fingers, voice strangled as he said, “It’s me, it’s  _ me _ ,  _ Brunn _ \--” like if he got the words out any slower the world might end again.

Peter’d seen them, when they first connected the ships. Relieved and distracted, focused more on everyone else than themselves, but he’d seen the reassuring brush of hands, the momentary press of foreheads.  _ Brunn _ , he’d called her. 

He’d caught it, because he’d done it himself too many times. Not with her, obviously, but with -- just. 

He’d caught it.

The adjustor looks up at him, smudged with finger grease. Smug piece of shit.

Peter pushes his bangs out of his eyes again and flips the multitool’s setting, shifting his feet so he can get a better angle. If he twists the right way -- and here he thinks belatedly that he needs a haircut, because his stupid hair’s falling in his eye again as he leans over, and Gamora’s so good at hair crap, she’ll probably think so too, probably know the right way to trim it -- it should turn. Physics, or whatever. Rocket’d know.

“I know you’d say just ask him,” he says out loud without thinking. “But you  _ know _ I can’t do that, he’d be all annoying about it and lord it over me.” 

It’s easy, once the words come out, to keep going.

“Which, I  _ know _ , I gotta be the bigger person. But he’s got better things to do, anyway -- freakishly good at keepin’ a bunch of crazies in line, you know? Probably ‘cause he’s also a bit crazy, but -- why won’t this  _ turn _ \-- like, he’s good at keeping kids occupied. And the rest of ‘em are probably scared of his claws or somethin’, I don’t know. You wouldn’t like it much, ‘cause it’s cramped, but I wish --” He can hear the hysteria growing in his own voice, but he ignores it, grunting again as he pulls at the ‘tool. From the tinny speakers of the Zune, The Carpenters starts playing, low and melancholic. “I wish you were here. The ship’s full of weirdos, and you’d --  _ turn,  _ for _ flark’s  _ \-- it’d make things easier, if you were here, less -- less weird, even if the weirdos are still around, but  _ things _ wouldn’t be so weird, everything would make  _ sense _ \-- why won’t this  _ freaking turn _ \--”

The multitool jams, and Peter’s hand slips, knuckles slamming hard against the edge of the air recycling unit.

“Mother _ fucking _ son of a d’ast shitheaded flark-assed bastard  _ asshole _ !”

He’s stumbled to the side, shoulder hitting hard against the engine room wall as he clutches his bleeding knuckles against his stomach. The lame clang of the ‘tool as it hits the floor makes him lean forward and grab it, just so he can whack it against the adjustor repeatedly.

“Why _ \--  _ won’t  _ \--  _ you  _ \-- fucking -- WORK _ \--!”

The top attachment of the multitool snaps clean off and makes a dull  _ clang _ as it flies to the side and slams into the engine’s panelling.

Peter sways in place, feeling like someone’s kicked the air out of his lungs and the ground out from under his feet. Like something else is in control again, not him -- like he’s floating, just a little bit.

And then his hand throbs, a flaring, blossoming  _ throb _ the sends the pain all the way right up his arm and slamming into his chest full force.

The multitool clatters to ground again. 

Slowly, Peter slides down against the wall as the gentle notes of Karen Carpenter’s sweet, lilting voice fill the room around him, and begins to cry .

It’s scarily hard to stop crying once he’s started, arms wrapped tightly around the knees pulled up against his chest, aching fingers buried in his own hair. He’s vaguely aware of the fact that it’s not particularly loud or messy -- that he’s rocking back and forth like he used to do as a little kid, hiding in dark corners of the  _ Eclector _ in those first few days. He can taste the mech grease on his own clothes where his open mouth presses against his knee, and he’s pretty sure the blood on his knuckles has got in his hair, and the engine room is cold and too empty around him.

For a sharp, gasping moment, Peter misses his mother.

And then there’s a presence beside him, small but groundingly warm where it presses itself against his leg silently. He hadn’t even realized he’d been shaking until something solid is leaning into him, putting a small paw against his knee. 

“Let it all out, Pete,” comes Rocket’s quiet, gravelly voice. “We got you. It’ll be okay.”

Rocket hasn’t once doubted it, he thinks, somehow clear through the fog in his head. Rocket’s been sure she’s fine from the second he got all the rest of them back.

**

Rocket is right.

**Author's Note:**

> reviews mean the world to me!!!


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